There are article transport facilities in practical use that automatically transport articles with use of an article transport vehicle that is suspended from a rail provided on a ceiling. In order to transfer articles with high precision, or more specifically in order to precisely hold articles at the transport source, transport them, and precisely place them at a predetermined position at the transport destination, it is preferable to precisely adjust the stop position of the article transport vehicle and the position at which a supporting portion for supporting an article performs a support operation. JP 2005-170544A (Patent Document 1) discloses technology for correcting such stop positions and operation positions.
The technology in Patent Document 1 makes use of a position corrector that has the same shape as the transport target article and is internally provided with a camera and an image processing device, and a correction sheet that is placed on the loading platform on which the article is to be placed. An article transport vehicle that holds the position corrector moves the position corrector relative to the loading platform on which the correction sheet is placed, and an image of the correction sheet is captured by the camera provided in the position corrector. The imaging result is processed by the image processing device and provided to the article transport vehicle. The article transport vehicle stores image information that is to serve as a reference, compares the correction sheet imaging information provided by the position corrector with the reference image information, and detects the difference between them as a position offset amount. The detected position offset amount is stored as correction data. When subsequent transport is to be performed, the stop position is corrected using the correction data, thus making it possible to precisely transport and transfer articles (e.g., see paragraphs [0022] to [0045] of Patent Document 1).
Patent Document 1 discloses that an operator lowers the position corrector and fixes it at a normal position on a reference frame, and it is necessary for the operator to be involved in the adjustment operation (e.g., see [0039]). In general, manual adjustment operations tend to require a longer lead time. The operation rate of the article transport facility decreases because articles cannot be transported by the article transport vehicle that is the adjustment target during adjustment. Also, if adjustment is simply automated, the article transport vehicle that is the adjustment target also needs to be controlled by the system controller that performs overall system control in Patent Document 1 (e.g., see paragraph [0027] and FIG. 4 of Patent Document 1) for example, and there is also a risk of leading to a decrease in the operation rate due to an increase in the load on the system controller.